by Joanna Walsh
Over the years, my parents began occasionally to acknowledge his presence. My mother, catching Enzo Ponza’s evaluating glances in the hall mirror, began to seek his approval on her choice of clothing. If he nodded, she would go out to work, satisfied with her appearance, if not, she would go back and change. She started to invite her friends in more often, perhaps with the idea of matchmaking, though this subject was never mentioned. They would sit round the small collapsible card table and play canasta, in which Enzo Ponza did not join. He said little. He was a good listener and the women liked him, though none of them seemed to want to take things further. Sometimes he walked with one of them in the green bit between the flats, but I don’t think these walks were ever romantic. I think the women confided in him – and some, perhaps in return, contributed to his supply of cigarettes, whose sources remained mysterious – but he never relayed what they said.
My parents asked him to contribute neither to the housework nor expenses, but treated him as a perpetual guest. However, they found some uses for him. They occasionally asked him to babysit so they could go out, which they, nevertheless, did infrequently, having no real wish to. Poverty was enough to save us from our desires. We did not drink or love casually, knowing we’d have to get up early the morning after, and that any consequences could be long-term. Be careful what you take on, my father said. I knew what he was talking about. The threat of tomorrow made me timid as they were. I think this is why my parents began to send Enzo Ponza along when I went on dates with boys from school. My romantic activities were constrained, it’s true, but I understood my responsibilities. My social life restricted, I passed my exams with good marks but didn’t go on to college, not wanting to incur a loan. Instead I took a shorthand class, and began to work in the office of the local newspaper, in the library, which was, then, still microfiche and clippings held in sliding shelves of brown hanging files.
I married a man I met at work (the only place I was free from my parents, and Mr Ponza). He worked in the production department and, during the early years of our relationship, his fingers were always inky. We had three children, a boy, then boy-and-girl twins, before our marriage dissolved and I returned with my children, and Enzo Ponza, to my parents’ flat. My other siblings were long gone, and, as my father – though always a non-smoker – had died from lung cancer, my mother was, perhaps, glad enough to have us, though at her advanced age she was so self-absorbed it was difficult to tell. We kept the flat clean and in good repair, cooked for her, and I was able to shoulder the household expenses. Because of my special knowledge of the newspaper archive I had been able to get my old job back, overseeing its digitisation, the completion of which, I suspected, might make me finally redundant. Enzo Ponza, as always, seldom left the flat but busied himself unobtrusively about household tasks. We did not discuss this arrangement, but found it worked to everyone’s satisfaction. My mother seemed particularly to enjoy EP’s company and, sometimes, I thought that she recognised him from the old days, though neither of them said a word.
It was some time after my return to the library that I was asked to investigate press clippings regarding Enzo Ponza. A member of the public called, anonymously enquiring about material relating to Enzo Ponza’s fear of snakes. I found nothing in the recently digitised archive, and was reluctant to go back to the older hanging files, whose metal frames bit my fingers each time my hands ventured between them. Nevertheless I searched under both E and P, finally finding a crumpled clipping with a blurry picture and an article beneath. Could that be my Enzo? Who could tell. The man had been photographed from above, his face in shadow. It was not a willing photo. He did not have the current Enzo’s bald patch, but that could have been no more than a matter of time.
Beneath the photo, the caption: NOTORIOUS PONZA: I HIT OUT BECAUSE I FEARED I WOULD BE STABBED.
Mr Ponza stood accused of something I will not relate here.
When I returned home that night, Enzo Ponza had put my children to bed. They were sleeping calmly. He had eaten the salad I had prepared for him before I left for work, and was sitting at the card table, smoking and looking at the newspaper, sometimes reading, sometimes staring out of the window. Was he this same Enzo Ponza, who was surely still in prison, though the piece had said ‘charged’ but not ‘convicted’. I thought about asking him, but the time did not seem right.
His moustache is white now, as is his hair, which he wears longer than he used to, its wings scraped back into a ponytail that circles the bald patch that has become a dome. His teeth are yellow with nicotine, and nibbed round the edges with brown. His shoulders are rounded and there is a single crease of fat across the back of his neck. He is now relaxed enough in the flat to take off his shirt in hot weather, and to sit at the card table wearing nothing but a singlet and pants. How intimately I know him, and yet how little. His demands, like those of my children, are small, inarticulate, made only through expectation. I am happy to meet them.
I sometimes wonder about our meeting. Why should a small girl have chosen, of all people, such a distasteful ruin of the masculine, all open pores, sweat stains and tobacco filaments – and someone of whose circumstances she knew nothing? The evenings of this last summer we sat at the balcony table, him opposite me, facing toward the flat, as always, caring nothing for the view.
I asked him, once, the question to which I wanted an answer. He waved a cigarette, which he had brought from his breast pocket, and lighting it, said, ‘You know how it is…’ Of course I didn’t. I never asked him again.
What has he spared me, this Enzo Ponza? What, with his constant presence, has he prevented happening in my life, and what, if anything, has he caused to happen? Does he care for me, my mother, my children? Is he escaping something, or is he just biding his time? Why, when I invited him into my life, did he agree to stay? And why did I never investigate whether he had any living relatives to whom I could send a ransom note?
Perhaps only I understood his value. How many people offer themselves so simply? At our age? At any age? Not many.
Kidnapping Enzo Ponza was my one act of love, and maybe it was his too.
The Suitcase Dog
(For the first Ben.)
‘Pets up to 25 lbs are allowed to check into
your room with you and stay by your side.’
THE ACE HOTEL
I am the suitcase dog. My head fits through a hole. I am portable.
My jaws snap shut on hinges. In the hotel there is no postman. In the hotel there is no letterbox. My jaws snap shut on nothing. What I defend is not my territory.
Objects, Food, Rooms. My life goes up and down. In the service elevator I am descended. I walk through the front door. I walk through the back door onto the cobbles where the kitcheners smoke where strange smells are renewed daily. I may not pee on the carpet. I may not pee in the flowerpot.
I am walked up and down the corridor. I am walked up and down the lobby. I am walked up. I am walked down.
I am walked but, also, I am walking.
Wait.
What if I walked without being walked. Where would I (who would I) walk?
I slip the leash.
I go howling down the long red tongue, hear something, chase nothing. It still goes. I stop. I find myself at a loss.
And I am lost.
I am shut out of something. I position myself, as always, in front of a door, but now on the outside, which is the wrong way round – or I am. In any case, no one comes when I whine. No one comes when I scratch. So I walk.
I walk on things that hear me differently: something hard on which each nail hits separately till I am twenty dogs – then something soft (I disappear). I listen for the way. Somewhere else a cleaner hums. I hear the carpet fibres pulled upright.
Then I try down and, after so many downs, I go sit in a bush in this indoor landscape. It is like the places I have waited before, but the earth beneath it is not brown. Still, all substances are like earth. All can be dug through
– blanket, chair, floor – to find the centre. And there is a centre to everything; I am sure of that.
It tinkles, the water on glass in the little arrangement in which I sit. And there are people. So I am somewhere. In a dining room? That is what this hush is: chatter.
Legs pass – not the right legs, I care for no above-the-knee – for a long time. Until.
I am frightened. Really, what isn’t?
Wait.
This one isn’t.
I will bite the diners’ heads off!
There is nothing so little, so little because I am nothing little, not here, not so little as you would think, eh?
By which time I am on a plate, not sure if I am pet or meat, or altogether meat on the outside, meat on the inside. But. (Bark!) Be less timid, please. Don’t be upset. (Wags.)
However.
A dog is not a nail of any kind, and I can be removed, taken to lost property, four-wheeled, at my back a pull-out handle, until my owner claims me, wheels me. I am walked. Up, and down. After which I am kept in.
I stay here behind the door, lying where light is not across. It crosses, does not stay. It shadows. What kind of substance is a hotel? Sometimes I break it apart to find out, always different bits. Anything not torn is for me. I am what’s waiting for it. But inside there is no satisfaction, only something white that puffs. It is not food. I lie. I watch what has four legs, carefully. I have four legs and a broad back, just the same. It does not move, though it also bears things.
I watch it all afternoon.
It says:
Anyone remember your first puberty? Anyone? Remember.
I was snipped. I do not desire other dogs but to repel them. I am always desiring something. Everything here isn’t dog. No more am I, oh no, not any more. I am baggage, picked up with the suitcases, travelled in the elevator, taken out between the hotel’s revolving doors. In any case, I am already carried away.
I am the world’s inconvenience. Except my own.
The Story of Our Nation
Tomorrow morning I will get up and again begin work on the story of our nation.
The story of our nation will be heroic. It will also be domestic spectacular pathetic operatic comic tragic tragicomic. The story of our nation will have acrobatics close-ups magic tricks panning shots kabuki marching bands and ice dancing. There will be Gorgeous and Realistic Scenery, an Original Soundtrack, Reflex and Precision-Based Combat with Manual Blocking and Dodging. There will be Tons of Enemy Types including Huge Prehistoric Creatures. There will be Item Enhancement. There will be First-Person Mode, as well as many other Modes. There will be drinks and ices at the intervals (of which there will be several).
In fact the story of our nation will involve everything. But, as yet, we are only at the research stage. At present I am working on hedgerows. It is a delicate job, and painstaking. I count the leaves and measure each. In spring, new leaves appear and must be categorised differently – by colour and dimension in their pale and unfurled state – to the same leaves as they manifest in full green, and to the tough dark leaves they become in September, amongst the hawthorn berries. So that objects in the world will now load in more smoothly, each morning I make an early start. The weather this month is mild and, like most clients (for we, being of this nation, are clients too), I take breakfast to work. There is a stop for coffee at 11am, and at 1pm lunch in the field kitchen. The atmosphere is jolly. There is camaraderie. We are comrades. Because of improvements, inviting other characters into a large group in a different zone will no longer cause desynching issues. Or perhaps it’s just the season, or the knowledge we are doing something good, in it together, one nation under the groove.
Some days I start even earlier. I’m not the only one. Walking before dawn I can’t see the people, just dark shapes passing dark houses – only the landing lights on – in a silage of cheap perfume. Albanian voices, Polish voices: they’re the ones who’ll work ‘unsocial hours’, which must be recorded just the same as daylight ones, though, having newly arrived in the country, some of them do it for sheer love. As do I. I use weekends to catch up. I like the mornings best. I wake early, drink coffee, revise the week’s work, though while I am working I am distracted by recording what happens those mornings. They’re so good, I wouldn’t want to lose them. The nation wouldn’t want to lose them.
My job is a good one. The hedge fund ensures fair pay and conditions. Even when it rains, the rate and size of drops doesn’t bother me; I am not in the water department. I am one of the lucky ones: others count the cracks in concrete, monitor bad air levels at junctions, size up the marble chips in industrial flooring. Still others measure shadows, clock them to time, test their density, calibrate the light that arcs night ceilings through the slits between curtains, the slats of blinds: light from cars, from street lamps. Some measure the gaps between doors and doorsills, the colour spectrum of hair on cutting-room floors. Somebody has to do it. Negative or positive, mass observation is observation of mass and, though this will be our nation’s story, it will not be fiction: we have to keep it real. Strictly.
We had books, of course, before, and magazines. We had movies, we had TV shows, also the internet. There, stories were parallel but not the real thing. What was missing was bare fact. So we were taken from jobs at KFC, the BMA, the IMF, the AA, MSN (and HP), the RAC, the RAF, and TGI Fridays, from work in HE, HR, PR, IT; on PhDs, on MBAs, on GCSEs, from departments handling production and distribution. There was enough stuff already. We had it all: white goods, brown goods, green belts, grey areas, thin blue lines, yellow perils, red mists, you name it. We knew in our hearts it was time to stop making any more. It was time to sit back and look at what we’d got.
…
After work, in the evenings, our results are shown on TV. I watch nature programmes, mostly, as that’s my field: the volume of water in our national rivers, the collective weight of the nation’s sheep, the mean hue of the pink part of daisies, broken down by region. I also have a side project (such hobbies are encouraged). Each night I count the hairs on my head. The result is sometimes even (oddly, perhaps, more often odd). I record the results in my personal log. My height and weight are noted each morning. I will not be forgotten. When asked for my papers I will present them: the list of diet shakes in my cupboard, the sell-by date of each packet in my fridge, the three sizes of my various shoes, the density of my earlobes in mass per unit volume, everything correctly categorised. I ensure (for instance) that my food is no longer listed in several places in the filters, that it shows up only under Consumables, that my fruit bowl, where the avocados sulk like slugs, is in a category distinct from the flies that crawl upside down on my skylight (I know their trajectories, the hours of their deaths). I shall wait for approval without fear: nothing will be missing. Everything about me will be remembered.
You know, the only thing I can’t bear is, we all change. Like, I used to have a fairly irresponsible job – thorns, if you must know – and there were certain things I wouldn’t say to anyone, wouldn’t think of saying. But, now I’m in hedges, I’ve grown, blossomed, and there are things I’ll say quite casually, sometimes involving cussing even (but in a friendly way, naturally), knowing that my words will be received in a friendly way, even the cuss ones, though I know they wouldn’t have been before. And now I know they might even be received in a friendly way by people who don’t know I have the job I have, because I have things that job has brought me, like confidence and a certain degree of social ease. And when I meet some of those people who knew me from before, they double-take, not because I’m doing the job I’m doing now, but because I’m doing it with comfort, as though I’d always done it. I want to tell them, I didn’t mean to change.
I don’t intend to change any more.
I live alone. It’s been that way for a while, and I think it will continue. More change would be too much to calculate. How long is forever? How deep is your love? What scale, what increments would I use? What chance
would I have with anyone else when I still know so little of myself? It is necessary that such encounters have improved stability. More must be recorded if I am – if we are – to count for anything. After all, To know you is to love you… or is it, To love someone else you have to love yourself ? Or maybe it’s just, know thyself? Though with that thy I stop thinking of myself immediately, and instead think about who would use such a word, and wonder if they’re in some play.
The story of our nation will not be like some play. Once all the data is inputted there will be scenes you can no longer walk away from, scenes in which you will no longer revive. That’s as it should be. There will, equally and oppositely, be scenarios in which it is possible. This will prevent you from getting your quest into an uncompletable state. Completion is only a matter of time, and time is a One-Time Redeemable Item. To give it to another character, you must deposit it in your shared inventory, accessed from major cities. To delete a character when this Item is in the inventory means it could be permanently lost.
In the story of our nation nothing will be lost. The story of our nation will be entirely true, and it will be a good story, despite its being true. Whatever we find the truth to be, it is impossible that it should be otherwise than good. It will be better than history, updated and analysed each moment for everyone to view. Though not synonymous with, it will be identical to the truth: once we input all the figures you will be able to see everything in a flash and, at the same time, there will be overviews, there will be breakdowns, there will be footnotes, and there will be headlines so that everyone will be able to comprehend the greatness of our nation which will be suddenly cohesive, like one of those ads that shows all the races mixing then the camera pulls out so they form the giant letters of a single word, not even a word, something more instant, conveying feeling as well as meaning – a logo, perhaps.